The Rozabal Line

by Ashwin Sanghi

  As such, he had complete access to the former director’s work—the work of Dr Fida M. Hassnain. A person listed in the Who’s Who of archaeology and having complete control over the entire body of ancient Kashmiri documents. One of Dr Hassnain’s bestselling books had been A Search for the Historical Jesus, written in 1994. This phenomenal work of scholarship had contained tonnes of painstaking and verifiable research to prove that Jesus had not died on the cross and that he had spent the latter part of his life in Kashmir.

  Yehuda had worked in this heady environment of scholarship and research for quite some time. Over many years he had absorbed each and every little detail that was available regarding the Jesus-in-Kashmir theory.

  However, there was one extremely important difference between him and Dr Hassnain. Dr Hassnain was a true scholar. He was a Sufi, a mystical proponent of Islam, and was never out to discredit Jesus or the Christian faith. In fact, it was his love for Jesus Christ that made him want to distinguish fact from fiction. Yehuda Moinuddin, on the other hand, was a different matter. He was one of the key members of the Lashkar-e-Talatashar. He was Ghalib’s most trusted aide, who managed all the financial matters of the group and lived on the houseboat Barabbas that belonged to Ghalib.

  He was sitting in the balcony of the houseboat moored on the Dal Lake sipping a cup of kahwa, a delicate Kashmiri tea flavoured with saffron and almonds. ‘I must find him before Vincent Sinclair and the others can reach him,’ Swakilki said to him.

  ‘I have spent the last two years researching everything there is to research on the subject. I already know whatever there is to know. I simply need to lead you to him. For that you must pay me my price.’

  Swakilki handed over a thin white envelope containing a slip with an account number at the Bank Leu, Zurich. Yehuda Moinuddin took it and looked at the slip eagerly. Thirty thousand dollars. He smiled a sly smile of satisfaction. ‘I won’t confirm with Egloff because I trust you,’ he said.

  Swakilki shot back, ‘You won’t confirm because I can kill you.’ He laughed. ‘No, you won’t. I’m the only one who can take you to him,’ he said as he thought of the last meal he had with Ghalib.

  Duly washed, they sat down and were served the lamb. Ghalib took the hot naan and, breaking it into pieces, lovingly served it to his men. He then spoke to Yehuda,‘In Srinagar, there is a Japanese woman looking for me. You will go, find her, and tell her that you will deliver me to her.’

  The trip westwards from Srinagar towards the Poonch district of Kashmir, along the Indo-Pakistan line of control, is very scenic. One necessarily has to travel through what is commonly called the ‘Valley of Kashmir’, a strip that is about eighty miles long and thirty-five miles wide, straddling the river Jhelum at an average elevation of 5,500 feet. Looking at the verdant hills and orchards and endless miles of swaying chinar trees, Swakilki found it difficult to understand how Bill Clinton could have called this ‘the most dangerous place on earth’.

  The rugged India-made Mahindra Commander 650, an extremely basic 4x4, was ideal for the difficult roads that they were traversing. Yehuda was at the wheel. Swakilki sat on the uncomfortable bench seat in the rear of the vehicle wearing an Afghan burqa that covered her entirely from head to toe. Swakilki was looking forward to finally being able to see the man in person.

  Vatican City, 2012

  ‘One can never trust Muslims!’ shouted His Eminence Alberto Cardinal Valerio. Brother Thomas Manning was silent as he listened to Valerio venting his anger.

  ‘We transfer funds from our Oedipus trust to the Isabel Madonna trust. We convince Dawood Omar to part with the first bomb of the series, only to be told that Osama plans to use Ghalib as the trigger! God curse his soul to eternal damnation!’ he thundered. Silence greeted him.

  ‘Don’t you have anything to say? Do you realise what could happen to the Church if word got out?’ he demanded furiously.

  ‘Your Eminence . . .’ began Thomas Manning.

  ‘Yes. Say whatever you want quickly!’

  ‘Does it matter whether Ghalib is delivered to us alive or dead?’ asked Manning delicately.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Valerio.

  ‘Well, wasn’t the intention of this exercise to prevent word from getting out that Christ had not died on the cross and that he had not been resurrected. Wasn’t it our intention to ensure that the story we have fed our faithful flock for centuries remains intact?’

  His Eminence wanted to be angry; instead, he smiled at Manning’s logical mind.

  Maryland, USA, 2012

  Stephen Elliot and Prithviraj Singh were with their friend from Mossad, Zvi Yatom. They were not alone. Around fifty people were in the darkened room along with them. The poorly lit room had walls that were padded in dark velvet. The sweet smell of incense pervaded the atmosphere. The room was accessed through a single passageway, the entrance to which was camouflaged by a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, painted in 1759 by Benjamin Wilson. Inside the secret hall, one could observe in the dim light, thirteen passages that led to thirteen separate rooms. Each of these rooms was used for very specific ceremonies.

  The Grand Master spoke. ‘Achaita, divine revelation. Rome will pass away, Jerusalem will burn and the reason will become broken. And my Law, the Law of Zión, will be acclaimed by the whole of humanity.’185

  ‘Achaita!’ said all those gathered in unison.

  ‘Oh Illuminated, Brothers and Sisters of the Great Hidden Lodge, of the Night, of the Star, of the Light! Zión is the Law!’

  ‘Achaita!’

  ‘Elevate and proclaim the Light, and break the chains of death, with the force Zión, oh Illuminated. I am the creator of worlds. I am the Great Architect of the Universe. Nations and governors are dust in front of me!’

  ‘Achaita!’

  ‘The next centuries and millennia will only know one word: Zión. And one Law: Zión. The next millennia will be of freedom and light, life and creation, love and kindness, under the Law of Zión, the Law of the Eternal One!’

  ‘Achaita!’

  ‘Proclaim Zión, oh Illuminati, and lead the slaves to the footpath of freedom. The brave ones will be free and eternal, to image and similarity of God. The cowardly ones will die forgotten and surrounded in their chains of ignorance and sin!’

  ‘Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión!’

  The Grand Master, dressed in scarlet robes, thrust the knife into the dummy that had been placed on the large black granite slab in the centre of the room.

  ‘Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión! Zión!’

  After the dummy had been ‘sacrificed’, each member went up to the Grand Master, bowing and kissing the Grand Master’s ring. As they kissed it, they swore their allegiance to Novus Ordem Seclorum, the New World Order.

  ‘We have lost our colleague Terry Acton to the forces of the evil Church. Fear not! His sacrifice was not in vain. As we speak, the forces of Islam and the forces of Christianity are positioning themselves for the greatest conflict ever. At the end of this conflict, they will both destroy themselves. And then will arise the New World Order—the power of the Illuminati!’

  Ceremony over, the Grand Master retreated through the secret passageway till it ended at the secret door that was camouflaged on the other side by the painting. The Grand Master placed both palms on the scanners by the sides of the entrance and waited till the door swung open.

  The forty-fourth President of the United States of America then went and settled down behind the antique desk in the study of the official 125-acre retreat in the centre of Catoctin Mountain Park in Frederick County, Camp David.

  The forty-fourth President, the SAS director Stephen Elliot, RAW chief Prithviraj Singh and Mossad operative Zvi Yatom were all peas from the very same pod.

  The Illuminati.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tel Megiddo, Israel, 2012

  Ghalib surveyed the area. El-Azhar w
as very familiar with the site. He had brought along with him all the required ordinance maps that outlined every inch of the territory. El-Azhar told Ghalib not to worry as they parked the truck inside a small thicket so that it would not attract too much attention. El-Azhar asked Ghalib to wait while he surveyed the caves to determine the exact location that would be ideally suited to their purpose. Ghalib would continue observing El-Azhar from a distance, using night-vision binoculars. He would wait desperately for the next four days while El-Azhar continued to remain invisible. Ghalib was worried. Could something have happened to him? Just as he was about to break protocol and go searching for him, he saw an extremely tired and fatigued El-Azhar emerge from one of the very small openings along the slope of the hill. Ghalib lifted his eyes to the heavens and exclaimed, ‘Ma sha’ Allah! I thank the all-merciful Allah for having heard my prayers! El-Azhar lives to tell me his story!’

  Bethany, Judea, A.D. 27

  Now, there was a certain man sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany. Jesus therefore came and found that he had been four days already in the grave. And said: ‘Where have you laid him?’ It was a cave; and a stone was laid over it. Jesus said: ‘Take away the stone.’ They took, therefore, the stone away. And Jesus lifting up his eyes, said: ‘Father, I give thee thanks that thou hast heard me.’

  Tel Megiddo, Israel, 2012

  Ghalib’s arrest by Zvi Yatom was quick and effortless. El-Azhar had done his job well by tipping them off. Within a few minutes Ghalib had been surrounded. The problem was that his truck, containing the alleged device, had disappeared.

  The Israeli state gave the police blanket powers to arrest suspected terrorists, carry out communication intercepts, and severely curtail freedom of expression. In high-risk areas, search warrants could be done away with and the authorities were free to periodically ban communications through mobile phones or cyber cafés.

  It was a classic chicken-and-egg story. Which came first—the terrorist or torture? Hard-line Islamic terrorist groups claimed that thousands had been tortured by the Israeli state whereas the authorities claimed that they had no other way to deal with people who saw nothing wrong in killing innocent women and children in schools, hospitals and restaurants. The greater the terrorist menace, the more aggressive were the police and army in questioning suspects and, consequently, the higher the levels of torture and interrogation. But each suspect that emerged from the jails, innocent or not, became sympathetic to the terrorist cause.

  Tel Megiddo, Israel, 2012

  He was strapped naked in a prostrate position on a table and interrogated, while the soles of his feet were whacked repeatedly till the bones began to crumble.

  Ghalib merely whispered, ‘The person who participates in holy battles in Allah’s cause will be recompensed by Allah . . . will be admitted to Paradise if he is killed in battle as a martyr . . . Bismillah, i-rahman, i-rahim, in the name of Allah, most gracious, most merciful, Sibhana man halalaka lil dabh, praise be upon he who has made me suitable for slaughter.’

  Jerusalem, A.D. 27

  The Roman soldiers stripped Jesus and proceeded to tie his hands tightly to the post above him. The flagellum was made from a combination of individual leather pieces, bone and lead. Two soldiers, one on either side, carried out the task. While the Jews had an upper limit of forty lashes, the Romans had no such limit. The flagellum struck the skin of his back, shoulders and legs with maximum impact. With each progressive lash, the whip not only cut through the skin but also through tissue, capillaries, veins and muscles.

  Tel Megiddo, Israel, 2012

  The High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector that Zvi Yatom had succeeded in obtaining from Tel Aviv was cleverly able to identify radioactive materials from their ‘natural signatures’—because all radioactive substances continued to emit gamma rays, x-rays, alpha particles, beta particles, or neutrons.186 The machine had already sounded several alerts. The first alert had flashed on the screen.

  Thorium-234. 24.1 days. Beta, Gamma, X-ray.

  It had turned out to be a huge fertiliser warehouse on the edge of a neighbouring field. The radioactive thorium was a key component of fertiliser and had a ‘half-life’ of 24.1 days. The half-life was the amount of time it took for half of the atoms in the given radioactive substance to decay.187 The next alert was near the kibbutz. It turned out to be the x-ray department of the kibbutz hospital. Zvi was looking at the notebook computer’s screen as it flashed another message.

  Potassium-40. 1.28 billion years. Beta (1.3-MeV), Gamma.

  Wrong number again. It was a truckload of bananas being transported to the local market from the kibbutz.

  Another message flashed:

  Thorium-232. 14.1 billion years. Alpha, x-rays.

  ‘Yes! We may have found it!’ shouted Zvi triumphantly as he ordered the patrol vehicles of the unit to head in the northerly direction pinpointed by the map on the screen. The signal became stronger and then suddenly stopped. They were in a granite quarry! Radiation was quite obviously going to be high owing to the high uranium and thorium content of the granite stone.

  ‘Turn back!’ he ordered. ‘Let’s move towards the hill.’

  As the convoy progressed, the earlier computer message reappeared.

  Thorium-232. 14.1 billion years. Alpha, x-rays.

  Zvi Yatom stopped his jeep and peered over the shoulder of the technician operating the infernal radiation detector. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  The operator looked up at him and said, ‘Sir, this area is the local scrapyard. Disused metal objects are brought here and are re-used for welding. The thoriated tungsten welding rods emit radiation. That’s the signature we seem to be picking up.’

  Zvi was exasperated. The damn computer was identifying fertiliser, granite quarries, bananas, x-ray machines, welding rods and everything other than the damn bomb. ‘Carry on towards the excavation site,’ he ordered, ‘that’s our best bet.’

  Suddenly, the screen came alive.

  Uranium-235. 700 million years. Alpha, x-rays.

  They had it! Uranium-235 gave off alpha rays, which had a half-life of 700 million years. They were close to a source of enriched uranium. There was no alternative. They would have to evacuate the area immediately.

  Waziristan, North-West Frontier Province, 2012

  ‘Shukran li-l-láh! Thanks be to Allah!’ cried the Sheikh. ‘Even though he is in the clutches of the Jewish scum, he has not forgotten his duty. Where is he?’

  The messenger spoke up. ‘I am given to understand that he has been whisked away to the Tel Megiddo prison nearby, where the Mossad agents are interrogating him.’

  ‘Rascals! They would whore their own mothers to achieve their aims. So what do we do about the truck that is sitting there? The detonation codes are only with Ghalib.’

  ‘Uh . . . Sheikh . . . It seems that he has already sent those to you in a previous dispatch.’

  ‘Ah!’ remarked the Sheikh. ‘Ghalib, my jihadi, you have made me proud.’

  ‘Err . . . Sheikh . . . why do the rascals want Ghalib?’

  ‘It’s a very long story. It begins in Jerusalem . . .’

  Vatican City, 2012

  His Eminence was very clear. Successive American presidents had used Islam to counter the power of the Church while continuing to maintain a façade of innocence. Illuminati bastards! They needed to be taught a lesson.

  The phone buzzed. Thomas Manning. He was speaking rather softly. The cardinal’s face turned red as he heard Manning’s words, ‘ . . . captured . . . Megiddo . . . Mossad . . . no truck . . . in custody . . .’

  His Eminence could control himself no longer. He screamed at Manning, ‘Don’t you realise what has happened? I wanted Ghalib alive! I compromised by allowing you to give him to me dead. The one man who could shake the very foundations of our beloved Church is now in the custody of people who would like nothing better . . . those sons of whores, the Illuminati!’

  Balakote, Indo-Pakistan border, 2012

  It was 11pm
when they reached Balakote. Yehuda was tired, but Swakilki remained alert and excited—like a hunter before the kill. Yehuda pointed out Ghalib’s tent from the distance. Swakilki took out the sharp Nepali kukri from its sheath under her burqa and held it lovingly in her right hand. She then stealthily moved towards Ghalib’s tent.

  She could make out the dim light of a kerosene lamp inside, but there were no voices. Obviously, he was asleep. She slit open the tent near the base and crawled in.

  ‘Welcome Swakilki!’ boomed the voices of Stephen Elliot and Prithviraj Singh as they quickly wrestled the knife out of her hand and held her at gunpoint.

  Standing some distance away, Yehuda smiled to himself. His Illuminati masters had paid him much better than the crumbs thrown his way by His Eminence. One could not compare the paltry 30,000 transferred from Oedipus to Iscariot with the one million transferred from the UNL Militia to Iscariot. UNL Militia was just an anagram of the name of another organisation, the Illuminati.

  Yehuda got back into his Mahindra Commander 650 jeep and started the long drive back to Srinagar. He needed to catch an international flight to meet his compatriots, who were already in Frederick County.

  Priobskoye, Siberia, 2012

  Zvi Yatom was speaking on a secure line with Stephen Elliot and Prithviraj Singh. With Ghalib in Israeli custody and with Swakilki in Indian custody, it seemed that the two key protagonists were now under their control.

  ‘So, is the truck in place?’ asked Stephen.

  ‘Yes. The detonation will be triggered from Waziristan on 21 December 2012 by the Sheikh. He has the detonation sequence. He thinks Ghalib has managed to plant the device in Megiddo. He does not know that the entire truck has been secretly airlifted to Priobskoye,’ explained Zvi.